


in the summer silence

by elliesattler



Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types
Genre: Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23924374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliesattler/pseuds/elliesattler
Summary: Here’s the thing about Ellie’s childhood bedroom: Once she moved out, it never felt like hers again. From that point on, it was a stranger’s room. She came home, and everything had changed.
Relationships: Alan Grant/Ellie Sattler
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	in the summer silence

Here’s the thing about Ellie’s childhood bedroom: Once she moved out, it never felt like hers again. From that point on, it was a stranger’s room. She came home, and everything had changed.

She’d visited for holidays, of course, and always had a darling time there. The last Christmas, she’d rung up an old friend, taken her mom to the local diner they frequented all those years ago. Her parents were always over the moon to see her. She could hear the excitement in her dad’s voice when she said she’d be coming over for a bit.

Her arms had burned as she packed, still sore and stiff as she threw everything she could think of into a suitcase. She drove there, faster than she took note of, and drove and drove. She pulled over once, stopping to vomit onto the grass beside the highway, and spent the night at a cheap motel. It wouldn’t have been much of a strain on her wallet to pull for somewhere a little nicer, but the motel looked as bad as she felt, and she figured the staff wouldn’t think twice about how unkempt she looked.

Now she’s staring into the shell of her bedroom. It’s the same as she remembers, or it should be: floral-printed pillows all neatly stacked on her bed, vanity covered in ponytail holders and bandanas, Polaroids of herself and loved ones on the bulletin board above her desk. She steps over to it and looks closer, looks at a photo of herself a decade prior. Seventeen-year-old Ellie has her arm slung around a friend’s shoulder — Charlotte? Carrie? Caroline, she remembers. Caroline and Ellie are smiling, laughing, and it makes present-day Ellie angry. She wonders when’s the last time Caroline cried.

\--

It’s night one, well past midnight, and Ellie’s bedside lamp is on. She’s sprawled out in bed, the family dog, Baxter, snoring somewhere by her feet. She watches her ceiling fan go ‘round and ‘round, listens to the ambiance of the suburbs outside her window, and considers the carton of cigarettes she impulsively bought on the drive over.

“Fuck it,” she mumbles, and adds a “sorry” when Baxter stirs awake and shoots her as dirty of a look as a terrier can. The bedframe creaks as she shuffles over to her backpack and pulls out a cigarette, then a second one for good measure, and a lighter. Her fingers lift the window up, and the night breeze flicks up strands of her hair, inviting. She used to stargaze out this window; now she’s only watching the lighter’s flame lick its way up her cigarette. She inhales. The smoke is smooth, relaxing, but she still curses herself for not being smart enough to pick up something stronger, and thinks about how different her life was this time last week.

\--

“It’s like nothing at all has happened,” she says into the phone the next morning, her fingers weaving their way around the cord. “Nothing at all. I got to my parents’ place, and...”

“You haven’t told them, have you?” Alan interrupts.

“No.” She sighs, and reels in the annoyance bubbling to the surface. “No, I just told them I needed to come home for a little while. Mom thinks I’m — pregnant, or we had a big split or something. Dad’s just happy to see me.”

The line goes quiet for a pause, and she takes the opportunity to continue before he can tell her what she’s done wrong. “I want to tell them everything. _I’m going to_. I just — they’ll never believe me. I mean, would you? All the evidence I have is — this stack of copies of paperwork Hammond’s people made us, and they kept everything as vague as fucking possible, of course.”

She realizes now he’s letting her speak of her own accord, and for that, she’s grateful.

“It’s weird,” she continues. The cord of the phone is all knotted now, and she hasn’t noticed. “That’s the only way I can think to describe it. It’s _weird_ , and it’s _fucked up_. and I don’t — want to be here. I don’t want to be here, Alan.”

“You wanna come home?” he says, sounding a little hopeful, or hopeless.

“No,” she answers without much thought to it. “Because I don’t want to be there, either. I don’t want to be in Indiana or Montana or fucking Isla Nublar. The entire earth is suffocating me.”

\--

She tells her parents a week later. She’d spent the morning out on their patio, fussing at Baxter to stop digging holes in the flowerbeds, and when her dad stepped outside to ask Ellie if she was planning on eating lunch, she didn’t hear the back door open. She only heard her name, and felt a hand on her shoulder, and she yelped, a desperate, needy sound.

She cries when she gets the whole story out, but it’s not the full-body, desperate, heaving sobs she woke up with last night, so she counts it as a success. Her dad believes her, her mom needed more convincing. She can’t blame her, of course; she hardly believes it herself, but it still hurts.

\--

“It’s just hard right now,” she tells Alan one night after dinner. Her mom had opened a bottle of wine for the two of them to split, and her hands are shaking as they hold the phone.

“Would it be easier if I were there?”

Guilt sinks her gut. The answer sits heavy on her tongue, and it’s something neither of them want to hear. She lets the silence hang between them, then settles on as neutral of a response as she can manage. “I’m gonna see you soon, Alan, I promise.”

“I can come to you, sweetheart,” he says. “You don’t have to be alone right now. Don’t you go thinking you have to do this alone—”

She’s distracted, trying to remember the last time he called her “sweetheart” when she notices the way his voice is rising, and it snaps her alert. “I’m not alone. I’ve got Mom, and Dad, and Baxter.”

“...Baxter’s still alive?”

That makes her smile a little, despite it all. “Yeah, Baxter’s still alive.”

\--

“Malcolm called my trailer this morning,” Alan says in lieu of “hello.” 

The pen she’d been idly twirling between her fingers falls into her lap. “Malcolm?”

“Er — Ian, yeah. From—”

“No, I remember,” Ellie murmurs. “How’d he get that number?”

Alan is quiet, and she can imagine him frowning as he thinks about it. “That was the least of my questions. He asked if you were around, and before I could answer, he said it’s fine if he just talks to me.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding flatter than she’d wanted to.

“He asked how we were doing, and I said we were fine.”

“You said we were fine?” she laughs, even though the words come out bitter and cold.

“I...” He’s at a loss, she can tell. “I didn’t know what else to say. What would you have said, Ellie?”

She presses her palm flat against her desk and looks down at her nails, chewed and ragged. “Probably the same. what else did he say?”

“Not much.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Not much by his standards,” Alan corrects.

A smile tugs at the corner of her lips; she indulges in it. “Right.”

“I asked how he was doing,” he goes on. “He said he’s doing the same, but he wasn’t very convincing. And that was it. Think he just wanted to make sure we were still alive.”

“Oh,” she sighs. “Maybe I should give him a call.”

“Why?”

She wonders that herself. “I don’t know. Maybe he’d talk to me more.”

“He sure seemed interested in talking to you when you met,” he says, and she struggles to interpret that one.

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that, Alan,” Ellie says after a moment. “I really don’t.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I’m sorry, that — wasn’t — I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“It’s okay,” she assures him, voice softer now. “I’ve been... lashing out a lot lately.”

“Okay,” he repeats.

“Alan?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” she tells him, the first time in too long. It feels good to say it, like she’s been holding it in for a while.

“Love you, too, Ellie,” he says gently. “Don’t forget that.”

\---

She’s crying the next time she calls Alan. The tears are hot, stinging, and humiliating.

“You sound far away, Ellie,” he tells her, and this time he can’t hide how sad he sounds. He must’ve given up trying, she decides, which is a thought she can’t settle with.

“I feel it,” she says back. “I didn’t sleep last night. The last time I did, I had a horrible nightmare. I went through six cigarettes this morning.”

“You don’t smoke,” he interrupts, like it’s the most pressing issue they have.

“I used to, in high school.’

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve mentioned it before,” she says with a certainty. “I told you that, on one of our first dates. We stopped at a gas station. you got me a Dr. Pepper, and you asked if you could get me anything else while we were there, like a refrigerator magnet or a pack of cigarettes, and I told you that I hadn’t smoked since high school.”

A pause. “okay,” Alan responds. “Must’ve forgot.”

“Yeah, must’ve,” she grits out. She closes her eyes, tight, and regrets every word she’s ever said to him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I am. I know I’m not being easy right now.”

“Well, you’re not an easy woman, Ellie,” he replies, but it’s with the kind of angry affection she knows well. “If I wanted easy, I wouldn’t be around.”

“What if I want to be? Easy?” she asks him, eyes still closed. “What if I want to come home, and I want to go to work like I used to, and I want to be myself again, and I can’t?”

“...Then I guess you evolve.”

\--

The days tick one by one. Some nights she sleeps, other nights she doesn’t. She picks up new habits, like waking up with Baxter to watch the sun rise and burying her thoughts in a journal, then ripping out the page with every terrible word she’s feeling on it and throwing it away. Her mom buys her a variety of seeds for their garden. A project, she calls it. Ellie doesn’t have the heart to tell her that half of them won’t bloom this time of year, so she plants them all anyway.

\--

She goes a week without calling Alan. she needed the time, and she thinks, so did he. When she calls finally, she’s laying in her bed, window open and sunlight pouring in.

“Hi,” she greets.

“Hi, stranger,” he says pleasantly. “Nice of you to call.”

“You could’ve called first, you know,” she reminds him, her brows raising.

“Yes,” he sighs. “But that’s running the risk of your dad picking up, and then I’d never get the chance to talk to _you_.”

“Stop,” she laughs, the noise coming out foreign and warm. “He only talks to you because he likes you so much.”

“ _Talks_?” he repeats. “Is that what you’re calling it?” 

“Yeah,” she hums. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Just okay?” Slight concern tinges her voice, and her brows furrow beneath her bangs. 

“Well, better than okay,” he adds. “Just not quite good yet. between okay and good.”

“That sounds like improvement to me.”

“Mhm. How are you?”

“I’m _good_ ,” Ellie says emphatically, something hidden between the words.

“Just good?’ he teases. “You give me shit for being brief, and that’s all you’re gonna give me?”

“Well... I do have _something_ ,” she confesses. “A progress update, I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah?” He’s smiling behind the words, she can tell. “I could use some good news.”

“Okay.” She smiles, too, and licks her lips. “I started writing a book.”

**Author's Note:**

> formatted for tumblr so excuse any missed capitalization! <3


End file.
